Eternal Sonata

"A dream-like adventure, that is a dream to play and enjoy."

Eternal Sonata for Xbox 360

With the release of Eternal Sonata, Xbox 360 fans finally have a jrpg to get their hooks into. Sure, Enchanted Arms had released several months earlier, and Blue Dragon preceded the release of Eternal Sonata by about a month, but it wasn't until this game came along that I got excited for the jrpg genre again.

Before we get into the individual elements such as graphics, music and sound, game-play, and combat... I'll start with a little introduction about the story of this game.

Eternal Sonata is a story loosely based on the famed composer Chopin (pronounced Sho-pahn). In particular the story takes place as Chopin is resting on his "deathbed", that is, the final moments before he passes away. We see his doctor and two concerned females hovering over him, looking concerned for his health and well being, and the doctor comments that he must be having a peaceful dream... and it is in Chopin's dream that the story of Eternal Sonata takes place. But more than just a story of Chopin, it is a story about the characters inside of this dreamworld Chopin has found himself in.

The plot is rather straightforward, and does a good job of making it seem very important for you to undertake this quest. Without the proper plot and motivation, playing through a game like this is rather uninspiring, making you feel no urgency to complete your quest and watch the story unfold. This game's plot is pretty important, while it doesn't start out all "doomsday is eminent" at first, as the story goes on you kind of get the feeling that could be the case if the main villain goes unchecked and unchallenged.

So in a summary without trying to spoil -too- much, you mainly play as Allegretto, a spry young man of the age of 16, who appears to be an orphan along with his orphan buddy Beat. During the course of the game you find out your main antagonist is the Emperor of the kingdom of Forte, who is trying to create an army of puppets by distributing a medicinal mineral powder, which he accomplishes by not taxing it, and creating extremely high taxes on everything else, including basic necessities needed for survival such as food like bread. When people take enough mineral powder, they are driven insane by it's side-effects and become very easy to control. Unless something is done to stop him, you get the feeling that he could get drunk with power and eventually spread this chaos on a global scale, without the game specifically implying that. And so, since no one else seems up to the task, the burden falls on your shoulders... it's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.

Graphically, the game is nothing short of phenomenal. Incredibly crisp visuals presented in a wondrously lush color palate. Extreme detail has been applied to every inch of the game world, making sure that no matter where your vision drifts in the world of Eternal Sonata, your optical sensors are going to be pleased with fabulous eye-candy.

Hand in hand with the graphics, are the character designs. Which I'm happy to report are simply amazing. And you won't find just a few of them either, aside from the veritable cornucopia of playable characters, there are also dozens of similarly intricately detailed non-player characters that you'll get to witness over the course of the story. Getting back to playable characters, you will get a chance to play 10 different characters during the course of the campaign, each with their own distinct visual style, as well as discerning combat traits.

In a game in a genre like this, special attention has to be paid to the combat system, because you'll be spending a significant portion of your time in combat, to gain experience, defeat foes who stand in your way, find special items, and to progress the story. The combat in Eternal Sonata is surprisingly inventive and a breath of fresh air for a JRPG. It's essentially a mix of real-time, and turn based elements, that blend together to create a smooth coctail of action and strategy.

The way it plays out, is you have an "Action Gauge" on the left side of the screen, this will give you either 5 or 4 seconds (depending on which stage of the game you are in) to move around the battlefield, choose which items to use, and which foe to attack. When you land an attack on an enemy, it refills your action gauge very slightly, so that while you spend time running to the enemy, you still have time to actually attack them.

But you'll still need to plan which enemies to attack wisely, because if you run too far, you may be left with enough time to only get in a couple of hits. And you want to get as many hits as possible, because each time you connect with an attack, your "echo's" increase, which is what you use to unleash devastating special attacks. Echo's are shared between all party members, so planning when to save echo's, and when to use them for other characters is also a factor.

To initiate combat while exploring the game world, you will see the graphical representation of enemies wandering around. Not only does this system eliminate the "random encounter" syndrome that most players would prefer to avoid these days, it also gives the game world a bit more life, by populating with actual creatures roaming around. Sure in town zones that is never a problem, but out in the field it would sometimes make the games feel a bit hollow. Thankfully that never happens here, towns, fields, and dungeons are all littered with life.

The system of having enemies on screen is superior to random encounters in my opinion. You can initiate combat whenever you feel like it, to level up, or if you just feel like a brawl. And you can also avoid it when you want, such as if you need to backtrack to explore an area you've missed, or want to head back to town for some supplies. This system works fine, as it can also force you into certain fights to advance the plot, or to guard a special treasure, which means you can't avoid ALL of the battles. It is a system that is very well executed in Eternal Sonata.

Which brings us to the towns, fields, and dungeons. Town zones are simply incredible. There is so much detail that you can't help but want to linger and take your time to look around. They're all populated with colorful characters and buildings, and the texture detail is quite beautiful. The only complaint with town zones, is that there seems like there is never quite enough to do in them. Talk to some townsfolk, visit the weapons/item shop... and that's it. There is very rarely side-quests, or many hidden area's in them. It's a minor issue, but I would have liked to see some more interaction within the towns. Other than the above mentions, the only thing to do is find people to play a score with, which I'll explain more later on.

The field zones, and by that I mean, the area's in which you usually do most of your outside travelling from point A to point B, are breathtaking. As I mentioned before, you will notice the monsters roaming around immediately. After that, you will just want to marvel at how gorgeous these area's look. No matter where you are, whether it's a verdant field, a fiery lava cave, or an icy snowy mountaintop, you will simply not believe your eyes about how good these environments look.

And if you think the towns and field area's look good, and are worried about the dungeons, let me just say, there is no reason to be worried. From the very first dungeon you encounter, which are the sewers in Ritardondo, you will be amazed. There are no gloomy dark area's with lack of detail, no, they are full of color and zest. The same intricate detail has been paid to every dungeon zone as they have with the towns and over-world. Some of the later dungeons will leave breathless with their design. Every area of the game makes sure your eyes are feasting with visual delight.

During your travels, don't think that your ears will be jealous of your eyes, because there's just as much ear candy as eye candy. The musical scores in this game are incredible. Each one seems to have been custom tailored to the environment that you're currently in, and they blend together with the visuals so well, that you will seamlessly and unconsciously take it all in. By that I mean, there's no point in the game where you think that the music is bad, or doesn't fit with where you're at. It just meshes finely, and you are treated with great visuals and great audio.

Not only are the musical scores wonderful, but even the little sound effects sprinkled throughout the game have even been given a lot of attention. Sounds like opening chests, and the little sound that plays when you acquire a new item. Sound effects while navigating through menu's, and making selections on who to equip with what items. They are all aurally pleasing, and even though a small detail, contribute to the overall polish of the game.

And speaking of audio, we get to the voice acting. Now in my opinion, the voice acting is outstanding. A lot of times in games, I kind of get drawn out of the game by bad voice acting, and my brain takes over and says "Man this is some campy voice acting." Or, "This is some really bad overacting." But in this game, the English voices are so well done, that it didn't really happen to me this time. There are only a couple of lines where I thought they didn't deliver them so superbly, but since every line is expertly delivered in this game, they are always held to a high standard they've created for themselves, so even on those lines when they didn't quite "hit it", it's still delivered professionally.

I didn't bother with the Japanese voices, I used to be one of those people who liked to hear the original Japanese voice overs, to cover up for bad English voice acting, but I realized that the Japanese voice overs were probably just as bad, I just couldn't understand it anyways so you don't notice it. Thankfully that isn't the case here regardless, because the English voices are so excellent. However, it's nice that they left in the option to use the original Japanese voice overs for those absolute fanatics.

Now for the critiques. The game isn't perfect, even though it approaches that realm, there are still minor annoyances. First of all, the game is a little linear, which you don't notice much in this game, since they give you so much to keep you busy. But a couple of branches here and there would be welcome, just to give you a choice.

There are almost no side quests to speak of. As I mentioned before, about the only diversion from the main quest are the Score Pieces. This is accomplished by finding "Score Pieces" in the game, which are very short pieces of music, that last about 5 seconds. You walk up to another person, and start a "session", where you try to match one of the score pieces to their music. You will be graded on your performance, I only discovered ranks of S, A, B, and F. F is the worst, which indicates that the pieces didn't mesh well together at all, B is decent, A indicates a very pleasing match, and S rank is the perfect match. The only thing you get from these sessions are minor items like healing potions if you score a B. If you score an A or an S, you might be given a special accessory item that you can equip. But these items are not very powerful, so there's really no loss if you can't match up a score piece. Ironically, there is an NPC later in the game, who if you perform a session and score an "F"... he says "This session thing is stupid."

Still, score pieces are a welcome diversion... even if I do have to agree with that NPC somewhat after scoring F, after F, after F.

Any time there is a "side quest", it's actually only disguised as such, as you will still need to complete it to advance the story. There's almost no real choice in the game, you are huddled along throughout the game and you have to complete all of them to advance the story.

There's also not really an option to go back and revisit any area's you've already been. Sometimes you will want to go back and just check on things to make sure you haven't missed anything. Well, make sure you explore them all thoroughly the first time, because you never know when you will be locked out of that area for good.

And although the dungeons are very fun and well designed, there aren't really -that- many puzzles in them. There are a few well designed puzzles, but mostly it's just, 'move to this area and hit a switch, then move back to that area to proceed', type of puzzle. I guess this can also be a good thing since the dungeons don't hang you up too long... but a couple challenging puzzles here and there would be welcome in my opinion, to give your brain a good workout.

In closing, I would just like to say, this game is a masterful achievement. Beautiful graphics, wonderful music, engaging story, compelling characters, and just overall an excellent adventure. If you are a fan of jrpg's, then you simply cannot miss this game. If you are new to this genre, then this is a fantastic game to start out on.

If this is the way this genre is headed, I think it could do a lot to revitalize this market in the English language countries, as it seems to gone somewhat stagnant outside of a couple of certain franchises.

This game does almost everything right, and very little wrong. Try not to miss this one.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/03/07

Game Release: Eternal Sonata (US, 09/17/07)